"Someone is playing a game, and they've only just begun," Says one of the show's characters, dramatically summing up the ridiculous plot so far... and I have to agree. Someone is playing a game, and they've only just begun! It's the show's writers! The pilot was bad. Having just given episode 2 a chance, I have very little hope for this show. Let's roll back the wheels of time to the pilot...
A bomb specialist is called to a completely empty Times Square to investigate a strange duffel bag. He is shaking, terrified, spasmodic: he speaks nervously, his voice cracking and quaking with fear: have NYPD's bomb techs actually never seen a potential bomb before? Was he like an off duty subway worker that the NYPD dressed up in bomb squad gear and sent into (vacant) Times Square? Then a naked woman climbs out of the duffel, and the officer (or whoever he is) jumps back, absolutely terrified, and holds her at gunpoint. Really? Honestly? And in the middle of a bust involving evil villains and adorable children, as I remember, in Kentucky, the lead detective is whisked away by helicopter, magically absolving him of paperwork, follow-up or leading his team in finishing the bust. Because a naked woman has his name tattooed on her back. Very believable.
Now comes the series of scenes I like to call abbreviations: the show jumps from one scene to another, assuming the audience has seen enough procedural dramas that they will fill in the details with stereotypes and overused tropes, so the writers don't have to explain what's going on. The beautiful geeky girl who knows how to run every possible test on a women with no memory covered in tattoos, because that just happens all the time; the sidekick investigators who ask dramatic questions dramatically, like "who is this woman?"; and of course the tough, pessimistic commander who doesn't trust anyone. They'll get to the bottom of this! Now we get to Jane: she's apparently a tough as nails amnesiac who was once a black ops Navy seal, but any time she shoots someone she needs to cry on a man's shoulder and act mopey and despondent. Like all Navy seals do... All she remembers is music (but not the Beatles!), how to shoot automatic weapons, how to speak obscure dialects of Chinese (which according to Chinese-speaking reviewers here the writers got completely wrong), and what chopped grass tastes like. Oh, and the layout of NYC.
Of course the beautiful geeky tech girl deciphers the exact tattoos that lead to a case happening in like two hours...Cause she's awesome like that. Chinese villains! Bombs in the subway! An evil mastermind who knows everything that's going to happen! All in a day's work for our crack FBI team.
Now we get to the second episode. The geek girl finds the exact right tattoo to lead to a deadly plot happening in like 2 hours. Then we get every empathetic, tug at Middle America's heart strings plot conceivable. A nine year old girl is kidnapped! (Leading one of our transparent characters to comment that the lead detective agent guy "doesn't do well with kidnapped children.")Innocent Americans are being killed as collateral damage! A hero has turned on his country! Where's the part of the show where people are upset that middle aged white guys are getting killed? Nowhere... only adorable girl children and innocent Americans need apply to the heart-string-pulling-acts-of-aggression that spur our heroes into action! In the middle of all this, Jane Doe remembers shooting a nun. And lead detective agent guy magically knows who Jane Doe is because she has the same scar on her neck that his adorable neighbor girl had before she mysteriously disappeared 25 years ago, leaving dad as the prime suspect. Very believable! I expected the next plot twist to be someone killing a dog, or grandma running out of food for the orphans, but no: next was "dad's dying and we don't have much time to make amends." Oh good. I was worried for that dog.
Oh, and the nun was just a middle aged guy in khakis with a white sheet on his head. That white sheet could have fooled anybody! Phwew, the Navy Seal trained assassin killer is good, not bad! After all, as one shallow badly written character points out, "only terrible people do terrible things. Good people do good things." Or something like that: I probably wrote that line better than the show's writers.
I'll leave the other huge plot holes---3 agents covering the entire city during two different terrorist attacks, Chinese people being 'the bad guys' who beat their wives and blow up the city, etc. etc.---to the other reviewers here. I understand their indignation. In an age when broadcast TV has to compete with cable and Netflix shows, with amazing writing and great acting, it's amazing to me that NBC felt like this show was going to be the great thriller of the season. To me, it's the amazing flop of the season.
A bomb specialist is called to a completely empty Times Square to investigate a strange duffel bag. He is shaking, terrified, spasmodic: he speaks nervously, his voice cracking and quaking with fear: have NYPD's bomb techs actually never seen a potential bomb before? Was he like an off duty subway worker that the NYPD dressed up in bomb squad gear and sent into (vacant) Times Square? Then a naked woman climbs out of the duffel, and the officer (or whoever he is) jumps back, absolutely terrified, and holds her at gunpoint. Really? Honestly? And in the middle of a bust involving evil villains and adorable children, as I remember, in Kentucky, the lead detective is whisked away by helicopter, magically absolving him of paperwork, follow-up or leading his team in finishing the bust. Because a naked woman has his name tattooed on her back. Very believable.
Now comes the series of scenes I like to call abbreviations: the show jumps from one scene to another, assuming the audience has seen enough procedural dramas that they will fill in the details with stereotypes and overused tropes, so the writers don't have to explain what's going on. The beautiful geeky girl who knows how to run every possible test on a women with no memory covered in tattoos, because that just happens all the time; the sidekick investigators who ask dramatic questions dramatically, like "who is this woman?"; and of course the tough, pessimistic commander who doesn't trust anyone. They'll get to the bottom of this! Now we get to Jane: she's apparently a tough as nails amnesiac who was once a black ops Navy seal, but any time she shoots someone she needs to cry on a man's shoulder and act mopey and despondent. Like all Navy seals do... All she remembers is music (but not the Beatles!), how to shoot automatic weapons, how to speak obscure dialects of Chinese (which according to Chinese-speaking reviewers here the writers got completely wrong), and what chopped grass tastes like. Oh, and the layout of NYC.
Of course the beautiful geeky tech girl deciphers the exact tattoos that lead to a case happening in like two hours...Cause she's awesome like that. Chinese villains! Bombs in the subway! An evil mastermind who knows everything that's going to happen! All in a day's work for our crack FBI team.
Now we get to the second episode. The geek girl finds the exact right tattoo to lead to a deadly plot happening in like 2 hours. Then we get every empathetic, tug at Middle America's heart strings plot conceivable. A nine year old girl is kidnapped! (Leading one of our transparent characters to comment that the lead detective agent guy "doesn't do well with kidnapped children.")Innocent Americans are being killed as collateral damage! A hero has turned on his country! Where's the part of the show where people are upset that middle aged white guys are getting killed? Nowhere... only adorable girl children and innocent Americans need apply to the heart-string-pulling-acts-of-aggression that spur our heroes into action! In the middle of all this, Jane Doe remembers shooting a nun. And lead detective agent guy magically knows who Jane Doe is because she has the same scar on her neck that his adorable neighbor girl had before she mysteriously disappeared 25 years ago, leaving dad as the prime suspect. Very believable! I expected the next plot twist to be someone killing a dog, or grandma running out of food for the orphans, but no: next was "dad's dying and we don't have much time to make amends." Oh good. I was worried for that dog.
Oh, and the nun was just a middle aged guy in khakis with a white sheet on his head. That white sheet could have fooled anybody! Phwew, the Navy Seal trained assassin killer is good, not bad! After all, as one shallow badly written character points out, "only terrible people do terrible things. Good people do good things." Or something like that: I probably wrote that line better than the show's writers.
I'll leave the other huge plot holes---3 agents covering the entire city during two different terrorist attacks, Chinese people being 'the bad guys' who beat their wives and blow up the city, etc. etc.---to the other reviewers here. I understand their indignation. In an age when broadcast TV has to compete with cable and Netflix shows, with amazing writing and great acting, it's amazing to me that NBC felt like this show was going to be the great thriller of the season. To me, it's the amazing flop of the season.